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About Dexter Fergie
Dexter Fergie is a doctoral student in US and global history at Northwestern University. His research examines the history of ideas, infrastructure, and international organizations.
NBN Episodes hosted by Dexter:
General History
June 21, 2022
Taking Leave, Taking Liberties
American Troops on the World War II Home Front
Aaron Hiltner
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
During the Second World War, locals in Australia and Britain described American GIs as “overpaid, oversexed, and over here.” But this conflict between civilians and the military didn’t only take …
General History
December 9, 2021
Traveling Black
A Story of Race and Resistance
Mia Bay
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
Mobility has been central to the American identity—think of the automobile, the perceived freedom that comes with it, the open road—but Black Americans have never possessed the same freedom to …
General History
November 10, 2021
Humane
How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War
Samuel Moyn
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
Geographic and temporal limits have typically contained modern wars—rulers can ask their populace to risk lives and treasure only for so long before losing legitimacy. But modern wars have also …
General History
September 10, 2021
The Cosmopolites
The Coming of the Global Citizen
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
What does citizenship—an institution that has historically linked identity to place—mean in an age of globalization? This is the question that Atossa Araxia Abrahamian investigates in her planet-sprawling book The …
General History
August 30, 2021
Organizing the 20th-Century World
International Organizations and the Emergence of International Public Administration, 1920-1960s
Karen Gram-Skjoldager, Haakon Andreas Ikonomou, and Torsten Kahlert
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
The history of international organizations has been an exciting area of research in recent years, with such landmark studies as Stephen Wertheim’s Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of US Global …
General History
August 24, 2021
Gossip Men
J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and the Politics of Insinuation
Christopher M. Elias
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
If information is power, then so too is gossip. In Gossip Men: J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and the Politics of Insinuation (U Chicago Press, 2021), historian Christopher …
General History
July 15, 2021
Legalist Empire
International Law and American Foreign Relations in the Early Twentieth Century
Benjamin Allen Coates
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
It might seem somewhat paradoxical that in the Wars of 1898 and their aftermath—the era in which the United States expanded its imperial reach deep into the Caribbean and Pacific—international …
General History
April 8, 2021
A Companion to U.S. Foreign Relations
Colonial Era to the Present
Christopher R. Dietrich
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
The field of US foreign-relations history is not what it used to be, and that’s a good thing. Earlier historians narrowly defined the field as diplomatic history and kept vast …
General History
January 13, 2021
Whistleblowing Nation
The History of National Security Disclosures and the Cult of State Secrecy
Kaeten Mistry and Hannah Gurman
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
In the past decade, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden became household names. They were celebrated by many as truth-tellers who blew the whistle on governmental abuses. Yet, in the eyes …
General History
December 15, 2020
Ghosts of Sheridan Circle
How a Washington Assassination Brought Pinochet's Terror State to Justice
Alan McPherson
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
On September 21, 1976, a car bomb exploded in Washington DC, killing a former Chilean diplomat named Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Moffitt. The assassination was a cruel …
General History
November 13, 2020
The United States of War
A Global History of America's Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State
David Vine
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
Since its founding, the United States has been at peace for only eleven years. Across nearly two-and-a-half centuries, that’s a lot of war. In his new book, The United States …
General History
October 29, 2020
Dead Tree Media
Manufacturing the Newspaper in Twentieth-Century North America
Michael Stamm
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
Michael Stamm’s book Dead Tree Media: Manufacturing the Newspaper in Twentieth-Century North America (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018) begins with the simple but thought-provoking premise that, not too long ago, newspapers …
General History
September 17, 2020
Oil Powers
A History of the US-Saudi Alliance
Victor McFarland
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
The relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia is a critical feature of the modern international system. It binds the global hegemon to a region on the other side …
General History
August 7, 2020
Just Like Us
The American Struggle to Understand Foreigners
Thomas Borstelmann
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
The American attitude towards outsiders has always been ambivalent. The United States, it is commonly said, is a nation of immigrants; today, it’s the most demographically diverse great power. But …
General History
June 26, 2020
The Diplomacy of Decolonisation
America, Britain, and the United Nations during the Congo Crisis, 1960-1964
Alanna O’Malley
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
In the summer of 1960, the Republic of the Congo won its independence from Belgium. Only one week later, however, Belgium had already dispatched paratroopers into the country and the …
General History
May 6, 2020
Liberalism at Large
The World According to 'The Economist'
Alexander Zevin
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
The Economist is a curious publication. It always takes a point of view (as opposed to the all-the-news-that’s-fit-to-print approach). It maintains a uniform voice (editors and writers are typically handpicked …
General History
April 27, 2020
Of Privacy and Power
The Transatlantic Struggle over Freedom and Security
Abraham Newman and Henry Farrell
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
We live in an interconnected world. People, goods, and services leap across borders like never before. Terrorist organizations, like al-Qaida, and digital platforms, like Facebook, have gone global. But, if …
General History
April 10, 2020
Canada and the World since 1867
Asa McKercher
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
If you haven’t been able to tell by the way I pronounce the word “about,” I should probably let you know that I’m from Canada. And I have to make …
General History
April 3, 2020
Human Rights in Twentieth-Century Australia
Jon Piccini
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
After the Second World War, an Australian diplomat was one of eight people to draft the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. And in the years that followed, Australians of many …
General History
March 4, 2020
Mecca of Revolution
Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order
Jeffrey James Byrne
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
In his brilliant, category-smashing book, Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order (Oxford University Press, 2016), Jeffrey James Byrne places Algeria at the center of many of …
General History
February 28, 2020
Barriers Down
How American Power and Free-Flow Policies Shaped Global Media
Diana Lemberg
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
Since the 1940s, America’s relations with the rest of the world have been guided by the idea of promoting the free flow of information. It’s an idea that seems benign …
General History
January 15, 2020
The Colonial Politics of Global Health
France and the United Nations in Postwar Africa
Jessica Lynne Pearson
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
International organizations throw up several obstacles—their immense scale, their dry bureaucratic language—to the historian trying to piece together their past. In her book, The Colonial Politics of Global Health: France …
General History
November 22, 2019
Sorting Out the Mixed Economy
The Rise and Fall of Welfare and Developmental States in the Americas
Amy Offner
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
The neoliberal 1980s of austerity and privatization may appear as a break with the past—perhaps a model of government drawn up by libertarian economists. Not so, says Amy Offner in …
Intellectual History
September 13, 2019
Free Enterprise
An American History
Lawrence Glickman
Hosted by
Dexter Fergie
“Free enterprise” is an everyday phrase that connotes an American common sense. It appears everywhere from political speeches to pop culture. And it is so central to the idea of …
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